


his body; a canvas

by The_RyRy



Series: Trust your heart, it will swallow the dark. [1]
Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 15:06:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_RyRy/pseuds/The_RyRy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The scars on his back tell more than his story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	his body; a canvas

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2013 Dragon Age Reverse Big Bang, based on art by cheesiestart. This work is told in two different times, written in two parallel lines. It functions as the prequel to Our Hearts Are Bigger Than We Know. 
> 
> Thanks to itsadrizzit for the early beta work, cheesiestart for such beautiful work, and the moderators of the challenge for putting it together.

* * *

  


The scars on his back ached as he tried to sleep, curled up in a corner on the boat to the Free Marches.

His world was a living nightmare. All those bodies... _Nathaniel..._

He had a new wound -- a knife to his chest. He hadn't noticed it, but Justice had pushed him through until he could return to his senses and heal it. A sliver of a scar on his left side just below his heart. How had he lived? Was that a new feature of being merged with Justice?

The scar blended in with the other ones. No one had to know -- Anders didn't even want to think about it.

He thought about his back, about how Justice's light had shone through his skin. Cracks of light across his arms and hands and legs... and his back as well?

Was his whole body to be a canvas for the sufferings of mages?

_It already is._

 

* * *

 

He stood there like a vision of the Golden City, light pouring in through the window and making his golden hair shine with the light of the first sunset he’d seen in a year.

Karl’s eyes lingered on him, but his thoughts were somewhere else.

“Anders,” he whispered, closing the door behind him, “what have they done to you?”

The response was not unexpected. Anders laughed, turned his head, and regarded Karl with those half-lidded eyes that were his trump card in the game of seduction. Karl almost gave in for a moment to the urge to rush forward and kiss those sweet lips that he’d missed so dearly, to look into those honey-brown eyes, to run his fingertip down the nose that marked the heritage of his young lover.

Karl still thought of Anders as a young man, but evidence to the contrary was right before his eyes: the creases at the corners of his eyes, the way his ribs stood out at his sides, the barely-perceptible anger bubbling under the surface. He had watched as the boy grew into the man who stood before him now -- the man whose light was going to burn out before he had the chance to shine.

“They lashed me, of course,” Anders said, his voice cracking with disuse. “They had better be careful or I’ll come to _like_ it.”

Karl had watched it happen the first time year ago -- _there’s always a first time,_ he knew, thinking about his own scars that crossed his back -- and he had been there to clean up the young mage’s wounds and try to reassure him that everything would be okay if only he would learn to obey the rules.

“I prayed every day that I would see you again,” Karl said, not wanting to talk of lashings or Anders’s torture. He hadn’t just prayed -- he had demanded of Greagoir and the templars, who had told him little except that _he seems to be learning his lesson_.

Anders turned away, but Karl could see that his eyes had narrowed. “I wish you would pray that you’d never see me again,” he retorted, a little too quickly and a little too harshly. These were the effects of solitary confinement, Karl knew, and he could not fault Anders for them even as he continued, “Maybe then the Maker would let me be free.”

Karl knew better than to try to mollify him; Anders had never learned to give in to the system and the marks on his back attested to that. His free spirit alternately inspired and frightened Karl -- they didn’t make Harrowed mages tranquil, but the punishments for Anders kept getting worse and worse. If a year in solitary confinement didn’t work, if repeated and intensifying lashes didn’t work, what would they do to him instead?

“You can’t keep doing this,” Karl said, crossing the room and letting his hand hover over Anders’s back.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Anders said, his voice cracking again, and he coughed. He sounded like his throat was bone dry.

“Don’t what?” Karl asked.

“Don’t heal me.” Anders leaned against the windowsill.

Karl frowned, hand still close to Anders’s back and the scars of all his previous lashings. It still mystified Karl that Anders never let him heal the lash wounds; Anders was so beautiful and his skin so boyish that it hurt Karl’s heart to see him so broken. “Please,” Karl said, no longer talking about the healing, “they’re going to hurt you worse than this. I couldn’t stand if something like that happened to you.”

Anders turned fully, hiding his marred back as he faced Karl, but the signs were still there hidden in the lines on Anders’s face. He did not look repentant, however; rather, he was defiant, the expression that most troubled Karl’s heart.

“This is part of me,” he said, his voice rough and his face the hardest Karl had ever seen. “Someday, someone who sees these scars will realize how we struggle here.”

Karl withered under Anders’s intense expression and the glimpse he got of the fire underneath Anders’s cool exterior. Karl wanted to help Anders, he really did; he covered for Anders when he could, healed his wounds and cleaned him up, even to the point where suspicion was being raised around Karl himself. He didn’t know how to fight harder.

No, that wasn’t right, and Karl knew it.

The truth was that he was scared for Anders and himself and their entire society, and that paralyzed him.

Anders finally sighed and looked back out the window. “I’m sorry, Karl,” he said in a whisper. “I’m tired and I’ve forgotten how to converse.” Karl’s heart broke thinking about Anders, whose voice had always been heard in conversation with _someone_ , alone in the dark with no one but himself for company. “What you do for me... it’s enough. I swear. I hope I can return the favor someday.”

Karl’s heart softened, as it usually did when it came to matters of Anders. “I don’t want to see you hurt, that’s all.”

Anders smiled at him, but the expression was not the familiar easy smile that Karl loved so much -- it was like a ghost of Anders’s former self. Had he lost the remnants of the boy in the darkness of his cell? “You could heal me with kisses,” he suggested.

Once, Karl would have laughed -- he never could help it with remarks like that one, which were so terribly and quintessentially Anders -- and when he didn’t he saw Anders’s fragile smile fall. “Of course,” he said, quickly making up for his mistake and not wanting to hurt Anders further.  He didn’t know how to deal with the effects of solitary confinement on his Anders and fumbled for words and actions. He deflected his discomfort with a clumsy attempt at humor. “I just never knew my kisses had such power.”

Anders’s smile was back but it was no more like his old expression; if anything, it was harder. “Trust me, I’m a spirit healer. I know these things,” he said in a pale attempt at a joke that Karl saw through immediately.

What had happened to the young boy with the lilting accent, the beautiful young man with the shining eyes and the insatiable smile, the lover he had taken in his arms and shared the pleasures of moments alone?

Karl kissed him anyway, but he quickly realized that Anders had grown up into a man that he hardly recognized. Gone was the flighty, needy boy and replaced with... whom?

 

* * *

 

Serra folded her arms and regarded Anders standing in her window looking out over the city. "Do you feel better?" she asked.

"Yes," Anders said as he reached up to tie back his golden hair. Serra saw the towel sag and nearly fall from his hips -- would he never quit trying to seduce her? By now it was almost an inside joke shared between friends, but more and more it seemed like the last struggles of a desperate man. "Thank you for letting me use your bath," he continued.

"You were starting to stink after that time in the Deep Roads," Serra teased. "I can't be followed around by stinky apostates; I insist on cleanliness in my friends."

Anders laughed, the sound brittle to her ears. “Friends,” he said, and she wondered at the bitterness in his tone. Serra watched the scars on his back move as he breathed. She had seen them once before but never so close -- a testament to this troubled man's past and the root of the fight he was currently losing.

Which fight, she wondered, the one between mages and templars, or the one between Anders and Justice?

She was near the end of her rope. The best she could offer Anders was a bath and an encouraging word. Someone else would have to pick up his pieces. "Speaking of friends,” she asked, trying to change the subject, “do you want to go see yours tonight?"

Anders turned and she saw the pained look on his face. "Nathaniel?"

"Yes," Serra said. "I saw the way he looked at you when we met him in the Deep Roads. You know he's lodging in Kirkwall, right?" With Bethany -- this strange man and her sister, traveling alone together. Serra knew they were staying at the Hanged Man before heading on to Weisshaupt or wherever they were going, and she intended to get to know this man better before he left. And maybe threaten him with bodily harm if he dared to toy with her sister’s heart...

Anders shook his head. "I know," he answered and bit his lower lip. "I can feel him so near, but I just can't see him again."

Serra crossed the room to stand beside him and look out over the street. "Why not?"

Anders was visibly pained. "He's a good man, gentle, loving," he said, not answering Serra's question at all. "It's good that Bethany is..."

Serra put her hand on Anders's elbow, interrupting him. "I see," she said. "A former lover, then. Jealous that he's found someone else?"

"No." Anders turned away from her, flinching at her touch. "Not jealousy. I left him, and I'm glad he's not waiting for me."

"That doesn't sound true at all," Serra said.

"I'm not worth his time," Anders replied. "I'm glad that he's found a good person like Bethany to soften the blow."

Serra stilled, the weight behind those words not missing her. This plus Anders's fanatical ravings recently, his continued frustration about his manifesto and the actions of the templars, the lies about the potion he had discovered, and that strange errand he had asked her to go on with him into the Chantry... it all made Serra nervous, and the pieces were falling together all of a sudden.

"What are you talking about?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Nothing."

She pressed him. "The blow of _what_ , Anders?"

A smile crossed his face -- one she knew well. The tired joke, the attempt at levity to deflect from the issue at hand. "Of seeing me again, of course. Wouldn't want him to realize what he's missed out on all these years."

Serra crossed her arms and regarded him steadily. "That's not working anymore. What are you so concerned about?"

He put his fingers to his temples, a movement she'd seen before. He was flustered and exasperated. "Listen, thanks for the bath. I'm going back to my clinic."

Serra watched him go, and then headed directly for the Hanged Man.

 

* * *

 

“What do you mean you’re _leaving_?” Anders said, still staring out the window with his back turned to Theron. Anders’s shirtless body was bathed in the morning light, and the criss-crossing lines on his back glinted amidst the sunbeams. Theron did not wonder at the scars on his shem mage friend’s back -- it was hardly surprising with the way he had talked about the mistreatment and abuse of mages in the towers he had been in. Theron did not understand this aspect of human culture, especially not after knowing and loving Morrigan -- why should those with such ability be locked away when they could be used?

He had made the right choice in recruiting Anders for the Wardens if it would save him from such lashings. His humor was welcome, and Theron could always count on him for a good drink and a laugh, even if he had not taken nearly enough advantage of it.

A bird flew down and sat on his windowsill and Anders’s head turned to look at it. “Tell me you’re going on a mission,” he said, and Theron saw his lips curve into a smile. “Although, I can’t imagine that you would wake me up for that.”

Theron cleared his throat. “No. I’m going after Morrigan,” he said.

There was a long pause as Anders considered the words -- or maybe, Theron thought, tried to remember who Morrigan was. “Your witch of the wilds,” he finally replied.

Theron sighed as he opened his mouth to add to Anders’s statement and then reconsidered for the hundredth time. Did he dare? He had to tell someone, and Anders... well, he thought Anders might understand the best. “The mother of my child.”

Anders turned very slowly, his shadow flitting across the floor. The lashes on his back were out of sight, and Theron admired Anders’s lean physique. He could see what Nathaniel saw in the man.

“You have a child?” A smile spread across Anders’s face. “Well, I can understand why you would go after her. Will you bring the child back -- is it a boy or a girl?”

Theron shook his head. “You don’t understand.”

“What don’t I understand?” Anders took a step towards him. “If I had a child, I would want nothing more than--”

“Anders,” Theron interrupted. He looked behind him to ensure that the door to Anders’s chambers was closed before continuing. “Haven’t you ever wondered how I survived slaying the Archdemon?”

Anders’s jaw worked. “No,” he said simply. “I read the books, but I thought...” He trailed off, and when Theron didn’t respond, he continued, “Maybe the Wardens just didn’t know everything.”

Theron shook his head. “No.” He crossed the room and sat on Anders’s bed without permission. “I survived because Morrigan... she... I’ve never told anybody this, not even Alistair, but you’re a mage and my friend and _someone_ has to know in case I never come back.”

Anders sat next to him. “What do you mean, _never come back_?”

Theron clasped his hands between his knees. He felt the size difference between him and Anders keenly; he always knew that Anders was a tall shem, but it was something else to have him sitting here shirtless and Theron feeling dwarfed next to him. He longed to run his hands along Anders’s skin, even the places where his back was scarred, and to touch the mage’s golden hair and feel him--

No, Theron would not do that. Not to Morrigan, not to Nathaniel, not to Anders, not to himself.

He told Anders the story instead. He put it as simply as he could, but how do you explain _she put the soul of an old god into our child_ in few words without sounding callous? To his credit, Anders just listened carefully, his silence a comfort.

Having told someone, Theron felt immensely relieved to share the weight of the knowledge with someone.

When he was done, Anders exhaled loudly. “I understand that might be weighing on your mind,” he said, being very particular about his words. “But why are you telling _me_ , of all people?”

Theron shook his head. “I can’t explain it, but I felt like someone needed to know. Just in case this all backfired, in case our child has turned into a monster, in case you meet me in the Fade and can save my soul -- I don’t know.” He sighed. “I had to tell somebody, and you seemed like the person who would know what to do if something went wrong.”

Anders laughed, a wonderfully musical sound to Theron’s ears, and shook his head. “ _That’s_ not something I ever thought I’d hear.”

“Do you disapprove?” Theron asked.

“Not particularly,” Anders replied. "But when have I ever done something like that? Weren't you there when Justice so astutely observed that my greatest skill is running away?"

Theron shrugged. "Sometimes running away is the thing that is needed."

Anders sighed. "Look at what running away has gotten me. These scars on my back, the taint in my veins."

"Freedom," Theron supplied.

"Am I free?" Anders asked. "I traded one master for another. Instead of templars standing around waiting for me to make a mistake so they can brand me a maleficar and execute me, now I've got the darkspawn taint giving me a countdown to my last days and reminding me of it every night."

Theron put his hand on Anders's elbow. "I'm sorry," he said into the sudden quiet of the room.

"For what?"

"Conscripting you. Giving you no choice." He shook his head. "You should have had a choice, not like me."

"Wait wait," Anders said. "It was either conscription or being taken back to the Tower to be beaten or killed or worse.” Theron wondered at the _worse_ , but he could think of things worse than death. “You made the right choice. We're alike in that way -- the Grey Wardens or death."

"I wish there could have been another way," Theron said. "Morrigan gave me another way to defeat the Archdemon, something I would have never thought of. She wasn't afraid to go against the system and to create a third path between death and suffering. I wish there had been another way for you."

"The more I learn about your Morrigan, the more I want to know," Anders said. "Mages living outside of the system -- not just Grey Wardens, but Morrigan, and the Dalish Keepers like Velanna. I wish the Circle would permit that."

"Maybe you can make it so, someday," Theron said.

"Who, _me_?" Anders laughed. "I'm just one man."

"One man with the ear of the King of Ferelden and the blessings of the Hero of the Fifth Blight."

"I might need more than that to undo generations of systematic oppression."

Theron patted him on the shoulder. "You might be surprised what a little force of will can accomplish."

Anders bit his bottom lip and Theron considered leaving him with that thought until Anders spoke again. "I have a lot of other things to worry about that are more immediate and potentially harmful to my person.” He sighed and cast his eyes downward; Theron hated seeing this side of his friend, so vulnerable and scared. “You know that _you_ are the only thing scaring those templar recruits enough to leave me alone. They hound me, Commander; I think Rylock’s buddies sent them after me just to see if they can keep control of me even here.”

Theron lowered his eyes as well; there was the rub. He was _tired_ of being the Hero of Ferelden, tired of his status scaring people into submission, tired of having to watch out for his charges. Could these people live without him? “You have friends,” he reminded Anders. “Certainly Nathaniel will take care of you. I nominated him to be the next Warden-Commander here, if I don’t come back. They’ll send some Orlesian in the interim, but that won’t last long.”

He saw the disbelief on Anders’s face. “I don’t need someone to take care of me,” he protested, and Theron wondered at his purposeful ignoring of the news of Nathaniel’s nomination.

Theron sighed. "I just mean that I wish you well, and hope you'll be safe." He chanced a look at Anders and those lashes on his back. "I don't want to have to come rescue you again with another choice with no right answer."

"Rescue _me_?" Anders laughed, and Theron could tell he was deflecting. "Sounds like _you're_ the one who will need the rescuing." He paused, seeming to think something over, before adding, "Let me come with you."

"No," Theron replied immediately. Not only would he never separate Nathaniel and Anders the way he and Morrigan had been separated (against his own will, damnit), but Theron knew she was going after the Eluvian -- the mirror that had so threatened his people, that had killed Tamlen, that had driven the course of his life.

"Please," Anders said. "Don't leave me here with them watching my every move. I can _help_ you."

Theron shook his head. "No Anders. This is something I must do alone." As he stood to leave before this got any more difficult, his eyes caught the scars on Anders's back. "This is my weight to bear, and I cannot endanger you anymore." And he could not stand to lose another beautiful friend to that terrible mirror. “Your path goes elsewhere.”

Anders sighed. "I suppose begging won't do any good?"

"No," Theron said, putting a hand on Anders's shoulder. "And besides, that's so far beneath you."

Anders looked up at him and smiled. Turning his back and leaving was one of the hardest things Theron had done in his life.

 

* * *

 

She found Nathaniel Howe and Bethany sitting at a table with Varric. Bethany was laughing, and Serra's heart felt a lightness at seeing her sister so apparently happy.

Before walking over with her ale, Serra regarded the man whose foot was resting against her sister's. Nathaniel was a tall, strong, and rugged looking man; he looked like a Howe, for all Serra knew of his terrible family from her mother’s tales and from living in Ferelden.

She had heard the stories about the Blight and the Butcher of Denerim -- some from Varric himself, who was talking in an animated fashion with this Howe. Serra shook her head, trying to remember that not all children took after their parents. And if Anders had spoken well of him, Serra supposed there might be something to this man that would make him acceptable for Bethany.

He was so much older than Beth, but the way he smiled at her...

"Maker's breath, Serra, get yourself together," she whispered to herself before taking her drink over to the table.

"Hawke!" Varric greeted her as she sat down. She watched Bethany's demeanor stiffen, and Nathaniel regard her with a calculating glance. "So glad you could join us. No Daisy or Blondie?"

"Merrill's working on her mirror," Serra answered, "and Anders...” She debated for a moment how to phrase the response, eventually settling on, “He wasn't in the mood."

She glanced at Nathaniel, looking for his reaction -- she saw nothing there, but everything she needed to know in Bethany's sideways glance.

"I _was_ hoping to see Anders," Nathaniel confessed.

"I wouldn't take it personally," Varric said, waving his hand. "He's terrified that the Wardens will demand him back."

"I wouldn't do that to him," Nathaniel replied. "I've heard he has quite the operation going on here, with a clinic and his new friends." He cast an unreadable glance to Serra and she felt like he was scrutinizing her the same way he had analyzed the layout of the tunnels of the Deep Roads. "That sounds just like something that would make Anders happy."

Serra shook her head as Bethany chimed in, "If he's managed to stay away from trouble. Which he probably hasn’t, knowing my sister." She smiled, an expression that Serra worried she’d never see again.

"Nathaniel," Serra said carefully after she swallowed another drink of her ale. "You seem to know Anders better than most."

Nathaniel eyed her, then looked over at Bethany. Bethany nodded and put her hand on his elbow, an affectionate gesture that made Serra's heart soften. The adoration she saw on Bethany's face was mirrored on Nathaniel's -- and suddenly, Bethany's unfortunate entry into the ranks of the Grey Wardens didn't seem like such a terrible fate. Had she found love there, or at least companionship?

Serra hoped so.

  
"I might," Nathaniel answered finally. "We were comrades and,” his voice trailed off, falling to a dark whisper, “lovers once, I suppose, before he and Justice came to Kirkwall."

Serra nodded; so he knew about Justice. "Have you kept up correspondence with him at all?" She remembered Anders mentioning that he had sent letters to some old friends, and wondered if Nathaniel was one of them.

Nathaniel nodded. "Not for years, but he did write in the beginning."

"Tell her," Bethany urged, concern in her voice.

Serra took a long drink, and saw Varric lean forward on the table to listen more closely.

"His letters grew... more desperate." Nathaniel folded his hands. "I read madness in them. And then they just stopped."

“What did they say?” Serra asked.

Nathaniel shook his head. “Nothing I could make sense of. Templars, a Tranquil solution, and how hopeless he was. How he was searching for a ‘third way between suffering and death’, and how he thought that one man could not make a difference.” He sighed and circled his fingers around his drink, staring into it. “He said he was losing his ability to temper Justice’s righteousness. It made my heart heavy.”

Serra sighed and locked eyes with Bethany. “That sounds like him,” she said. “We should talk of different things, I don’t have the heart for Anders tonight. Bethany, can I speak with you for a moment?”

“Let me buy the Wardens another round,” Varric offered suddenly. “Come with me, Nathaniel, and tell me more about this Warden bastard king of yours. I do love a good story about a bastard.”

The two men stood and went to the bar, leaving Bethany and Serra alone at the table. Serra regarded her sister carefully. “Are you happy, Beth?” she asked.

A sad shadow fell across Bethany’s face. “Being here is hard,” she said. “Seeing you is hard. It reminds me of what I had to give up, and that terrible choice that wasn’t a choice. But...”

Serra saw her eyes drift to Nathaniel, and she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “Is he good to you?”

Bethany’s eyes flicked back to Serra, and she feigned shock. “Nathaniel? Of course he’s good, he’s the Commander of--”

“Stop it, Beth,” Serra said, smiling and kicking her under the table gently. “I see the way you look at each other. You don’t have to hide it, as long as he takes care of you.”

Bethany’s facade fell and she smiled again in that way that Serra missed so much. “He does, sister,” she said. “He’s so regal, so gentle. He courts me, you know? It’s like something out of the stories sometimes.”

Serra remembered Bethany playing princess back in Lothering, and all the books she used to read about common girls falling in love with noble men. It was good, Serra thought, that someone’s childhood dreams had come true.

“I’m so glad to see you happy,” Serra said. “Is this thing with him and Anders a problem?”

“No.” Bethany shook her head. “He still loves Anders in a very different way since they were so close; Nathaniel promised to come for him if he got in trouble. That’s why we’re here.”

“You’re okay with this?”

Bethany smiled and nodded. “It was my idea,” she replied. “Anders is my friend too. It hurt both of us to worry after him.”

Serra tapped her fingers on the mug. Even though she was sick of worrying about Anders, the strange remarks he had made earlier in the evening had rattled her; now she was face-to-face with a way out for him. “There’s something wrong,” she admitted to Bethany. “Anders is planning something. I don’t know what it is, but he’s acting suspicious and that makes me think he’s in trouble. I wish you and Nathaniel could help get him out of this city before it destroys him.”

Bethany sighed and looked over towards the bar where Varric and Nathaniel were coming back with drinks. “You should talk to Nathaniel,” she said. “He would know what to do. I’ll help however I can.”

“I’ll tell him I want to grill him about how he treats my little sister,” Serra said.

Bethany folded her hands. “I imagine you’ll probably do that too,” she said before smiling at Nathaniel as he sat down next to her.

It was an hour later when Bethany created a diversion by asking Varric if he had any good books that she could take with her on the road to keep her occupied at night. Varric had laughed and told Bethany about his latest novels and had escorted her away to show off his collection. Serra had watched them go, delighting at the smile on Bethany's face as well as the fond look that Nathaniel was giving her as she walked away.

"Ser Howe," she finally said.

"Nathaniel, please," he replied.

"Nathaniel, then," Serra said. "Let's go to the vacant room upstairs."

He raised his eyebrow at her and asked warily, "What do you intend, my lady?"

"To threaten you with bodily harm if you hurt my sister," she said. It was a ruse and she saw that he knew it immediately; he drank the last of his ale and stood, remarkably steady on his feet for how much he had drunk.

When they were alone in a small meeting room that Serra had used for other 'private conversations' before, she spoke in a low voice. "It's about Anders," she said, "although I really will come after you if you hurt Bethany. I don't think I have to worry about that."

He put his fingers to his brow and sighed. "I know you will," he said, "I have only the best of intentions towards your sister. But Anders and Justice... what do you know of them?"

He was the first person Serra had heard refer to Anders as 'them'. She had never thought of that, since Anders was so adamant that they were one and the same -- even though she had seen them separate in the Fade, talked to them both separately. Serra had to admit, she didn't know how to handle pronouns where Anders was concerned.

But that wasn't what she was here to talk about. "Anders is my friend," Serra said, "and a close one. I know about how he trusts you. I asked him to come tonight, but he refused because, I think, he doesn't want you to find out what he's up to."

Nathaniel's eyes narrowed. "What _is_ he up to?"

Serra shook her head. "I have no idea, but he tried to get me to sneak him into the Chantry a few days ago. He's planning something or he’s involved with someone, and I think he's going over the edge."

Nathaniel sighed, and Serra noticed that his hand was at a pouch on his belt. "I thought as much," he said. "Varric told me about how Anders tried to give away his mother's pillow. He had that even in the Wardens, I know how special it was to him and it must be really dire if he’s giving it away."

Serra watched Nathaniel as he reached his fingers into that pouch on his belt and removed a vial filled with a dark green liquid.  "He probably won't leave willingly, whatever it is," she said, eyeing that vial.

"I know. He seems very attached to his life here, his cause, his friends," Nathaniel replied, looking down and sloshing the green liquid around. He looked conflicted.

"What's on your mind?" Serra asked him.

"He will hate me if I do this to him," Nathaniel said. "He always told me he didn't need to be rescued or looked after. I promised him anyway. Will this be betrayal?"

Serra took a deep breath, eyeing that vial he held. It looked like poison, and who did he intend it for? "What is that--"

"Don't worry, this is not to be used on you," he said, handing her the vial. "Do you know what this is?"

She took the vial and examined it. "Poison of some sort," she said.

"Not familiar with the craft, then?"

She shook her head. "I have others make it for me."

"Probably wise of you." He took the vial back and uncorked it, inhaling the scent. "It's a paralytic poison, intended to immobilize a body and make it appear dead. It also has some magebane in it to make it especially potent on magic users, knocking them unconscious and inhibiting their ability to use magic. Its effects last hours but are temporary, and works best when administered directly into the bloodstream."

Serra regarded him carefully. "You intend that for Anders."

Nathaniel's answering nod was accompanied by a sigh and a frown. "Yes."

Serra shook her head. "He will hate you," she said. "He would resent not being given the choice, and you would lose him again."

"I can't think of another way to get him out, not without him and Justice fighting me and probably winning."

Serra reached forward and put her hand on the vial. "I'll do it," she said. "Let him hate me."

"I couldn't--"

"No," she said. "This is the best chance he's got to get out. He's in over his head, and I can't bear that. Let me do this, and then you take him."

Nathaniel furrowed his brow. "And lie to him?"

"Don't lie to him," Serra insisted. "Tell him whatever you need to -- even that you couldn't do it, but I did and you cleaned up after me--"

There was a sudden banging on the door. "Hawke," came Varric's voice, "something's going on at the Chantry. I think we should go."

Nathaniel's eyes went wide, and Serra grabbed the vial from him. "Stay far away, but be ready," she said as she stormed out of the room.

 

* * *

 

“Just rest,” Anders whispered to Serra Hawke, covering her with a moth-eaten blanket as Bethany watched from the doorway. “You’ll be good as new in the morning.”

“Good as new,” Serra replied drowsily. “Sleeping in Fenris’s stolen mansion...”

“Shh,” Anders said, his voice barely a whisper. “You will be safe here for a while.”

Bethany thought that it was a good thing that Fenris had already passed out from his own injuries and the healing Anders had done on him, or else she might have gone crazy from their incessant squabbling.

Bethany waited until she saw her sister’s eyes slide closed with exhaustion. Anders stayed for a moment before leaving the room, beckoning for Bethany to follow him. As she walked behind him, she noticed the growing bloodstain on his tunic. "I see you're wounded too," she said once they were in the next room, away from their sleeping friends. "Can I help?"

Anders turned and looked out the window over the street below. "It's not a bad wound, but I can't reach it," he admitted. "I mostly stopped the bleeding on myself, but I can't heal it unless I can reach."

Bethany nodded and smiled reassuringly at him. "I can try," she said.

"Thank you, Bethany," he said, and then before she could ask he took off his tunic to reveal his body.

Bethany could not hold back her sharp intake of breath at Anders’s mangled back. It was such a contrast to the rest of his body -- Bethany could not deny that she had given the handsome apostate long glances when no one was looking. She saw the way he looked at Serra -- and she had to laugh to herself in the knowledge that Serra would not be interested in what Anders had to offer -- but Bethany found herself wondering if maybe Anders would look at _her_ that way someday. She certainly looked at him enough; he was so tall and strong, his hair looked so beautiful especially in the sunlight, and his eyes were warm and inviting.

She dared to think that the red scars and broken skin only made him _more_ attractive.

His zealotry made a sudden amount of sense. Those were lash marks, she knew, and Anders had spoken of being beaten and lashed in the Circle. Her heart sank when she realized how terrible Anders's life must have been there if he would endure such pain to escape.

She felt her own hypocrisy keenly. Anders had always wanted to be free and there, before her, was the price he paid for it; she had enjoyed that freedom her whole life and had even taken it for granted.

Never again, not after seeing this.

"I see you're looking," he said into the silence.

"I'm sorry," Bethany apologized quickly. How could she let herself be so stunned by his appearance? “I was just thinking--”

Anders shook his head. "Don't," he said gently. "I know you’ve been wondering whether the Circle would do you some good,” and she wondered _how_ he had known that, “or if maybe it would lessen the pressure on your family from the templars." He turned to look at her, and her eyes drifted down to his bare chest and the soft golden hair there. (Would it be as soft as the hair on his head, she wondered?) "I've tried to convince you otherwise, but maybe seeing is believing."

She nodded, understanding what he was trying to say. “Did they lash everybody, or just those who misbehaved?”

She immediately regretted her words, but Anders did not seem phased. “I was lashed in particular, yes, but I was not the only one. I had friends who took beatings and whippings for refusing the advances of amorous templars, or for daring to fall in love with another mage.”

He looked at her pointedly and her heart sank. Was this why he never looked at her the way he looked at Serra? Did she remind him of all those mages he was never allowed to fall in love with?

“Do you understand?” he asked, his voice falling to a whisper. “Do you see why I had to come here, why I do what I do?”

She understood that part, at least, although she knew she could never understand what he had been through. She nodded, but her eyes drifted to his wound at the edge of his ribcage that was seeping blood. "Yes, but will you let me heal you so you can continue?" she asked.

Anders smiled at her, and her heart fluttered. "As you wish," he replied.

 

* * *

 

Too late.

Serra had been too late to stop him and his terrible plans.

Her fingers were on her dagger as Anders beat his staff on the ground. When she felt the cobblestones rumble under her feet and that terrible light blazed in the sky, she knew.

And when she stared at his back on the box, remembering the scars under those clothes ( _inflicted by those he had just murdered_ ), she knew it was too late. This man, marked by his terrible past, had been driven to leave his own mark on the world.

Even knowing the answer, she felt compelled to ask, "Anders, how could you?"

His response did not satisfy her, but she sympathized with his reasons. To fight for Karl, for Bethany ( _her Bethany, hiding in the shadows with her Nathaniel, living a life she could never have had without Anders_ ), to change the future so no one would have to suffer like he had.

His wish for death hurt her heart; he begged her to kill him, to finish the job that had been started on him since he first called fire in his family’s barn in the Anderfels. She looked at his back, seeing those lash marks all over again, hearing his cries of despair for his Karl; but now she heard Anders’s pleas to release him from the torment of his life and his uncertain merger with Justice. Was this the choice, then? Death as a martyr or life as an abomination?

How could she kill her friend, even if he asked for it? She'd had to watch so much death -- sick to her stomach, she remembered how Anders killed his tranquil lover to release him from his terrible fate, Aveline put the knife to her husband to save him from the Blight, poor dear Merrill had to kill the woman who had been like a mother to her, and her mother’s dear face on a mangled body...

Was there a solution between death and suffering? As she reached for her dagger, she felt the vial of paralytic poison.

She looked up and saw Nathaniel Howe standing on the ramparts.

 

* * *

 

_The dagger in his chest, the dagger in his back. Matching scars meeting in the middle in the place where Justice had saved Anders’s life, now released._

_How it started, how it ended._

_His body on the cobblestones, a martyr, the picture of the sufferings of his kind._

_The revolution had begun. Justice could rest._

 


End file.
